Tech Thursday (6/21): Program Launched to Support Women Veteran-Owned Small Businesses Across the U.S, Zoho Brings Business Intelligence to Zoho CRM, HootSuite & HubSpot Announce Partnership, CipherCloud Delivers the First Cloud Encryption Solution for Gmail

Capital One and Count Me In for Women’s Economic Independence to Launch Program to Support Women Veteran-Owned Small Businesses Across the U.S

Zoho Brings Business Intelligence to Zoho CRM

HootSuite & HubSpot Announce Partnership to Close the Loop on Social Marketing & Lead Management

CipherCloud Delivers the First Cloud Encryption Solution for Gmail

Capital One and Count Me In for Women’s Economic Independence to Launch Program to Support Women Veteran-Owned Small Businesses Across the U.S.

Capital One’s $750,000 Grant and Three-Year Commitment Will Create Small Business Training Program for Women Veteran Business Leaders

MCLEAN, Va., /PRNewswire/ —Capital One Financial Corporation (NYSE: COF) today announced at the Clinton Global Initiative America meeting that it will partner with Count Me In for Women’s Economic Independence, the leading not-for-profit provider of business education and resources for women, to help create a new small business training program for women veteran business owners this Fall.

Capital One’s $750,000, three-year commitment will fund a new program launching in December that will focus on reaching women veteran business owners who are past the start-up phase, but encountering challenges that are blocking continued business growth. There are currently more than 100,000 businesses in the U.S. that are at least 50 percent owned by women veterans.

“After serving our country, service members are returning home and looking for ways to translate their unique skill sets into the civilian workforce. At Capital One, we’re proud to support our veterans during this important transition,” said John G. Finneran, Jr., General Counsel, Capital One. “We are committed to doing our part. Working together with Count Me In we believe that there is a tremendous opportunity for us to help women veteran business owners succeed and watch their businesses grow.”

The new program will kick-off in December of 2012 with a two-day Leadership Institute at Capital One’s McLean, Virginia, headquarters, right outside of Washington, D.C. The inaugural forum will gather hundreds of women veterans and business growth experts to participate in a variety of panels and workshops, some of which will be led by other female veterans. The forum’s agenda will be shaped by a Women Veterans Steering Committee, comprised of a diverse group of public and private sector authorities on women veteran’s affairs and women-owned business issues.

The event will be followed by a six-month intensive group coaching program designed to help women business owners focus on personal growth and increasing business skills, based on Count Me In’s successful model for women entrepreneurs. Capital One will also engage its skilled pro bono volunteers to provide a range of assistance to the participants and provide additional volunteer services. Capital One and Count Me In will hold additional Leadership Institutes for women veteran business owners over the course of the three-year program.

Capital One has committed $750,000 and additional in-kind services such as coaching and mentoring. The new program builds on Capital One’s three-year, $4.5 million commitment to support the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Hiring Our Heroes initiative, a program which provides job fairs and workforce training initiatives across the United States for veterans and military spouses. In March 2012, Capital One, the U.S. Chamber and National Chamber Foundation announced “Hiring 500,000 Heroes,” a national campaign to engage the business community in committing to hire 500,000 veterans and military spouses by the end of 2014.

Zoho Brings Business Intelligence to Zoho CRM

Zoho Reports Integration Improves CRM Information Visualization

PLEASANTON, Calif. —Zoho today announced that the company is adding business intelligence to Zoho CRM, with Zoho Reports integration. The move brings Zoho Reports’ proven business intelligence and advanced reporting capabilities to the company’s affordable on-demand customer relationship management software. A video demo of the new business intelligence and reporting features in Zoho CRM is available at http://youtu.be/GYUE-Y9sjO8. Also, a public demo database is available athttp://ow.ly/bnryp.

“An application like CRM holds a lot of business information. The ability to dissect this information in an easy way is important for businesses. So, we are bringing the power of our business intelligence application to Zoho CRM with lots of built-in reports,” said Raju Vegesna, Zoho evangelist. “As the only vendor offering both CRM and business intelligence tools, we’re in a unique position to offer a tightly integrated, CRM and business intelligence application with powerful charts, tabular reports, dashboards and other visual representations of CRM data.”

Business Intelligence and Advanced Reporting in Zoho CRM

With the Zoho Reports integration, Zoho supplements the established reporting engine in Zoho CRM with business intelligence and advanced reporting capabilities. Now, Zoho CRM users can visually analyze their CRM information, creating their own insightful reports and dashboards using a drag and drop interface — no IT help required.

Steve Tiley, managing director of MDIS Services Ltd.and an early adopter of the Zoho CRM and Zoho Reports integration, confirmed, “The speed and ease of creating monthly activity reports as well as their automatic distribution to senior management across our organization has saved countless hours of manual work for MDIS.”

With the Zoho Reports integration, Zoho CRM users can slice and dice data, transforming it into meaningful information by generating charts, graphs, reports, pivot tables and more. Clicking on individual reports lets users drill down and view the underlying data. Users can join different Zoho CRM modules as well as choose the rows and columns to synchronize and report on for each module.

Other highlights of the Zoho CRM and Zoho Reports integration include:

70+ pre-built reports and dashboards for sales, potentials, expected revenue and more

Support for leads, accounts, potentials, contacts and user modules in Zoho CRM

Data, reports and dashboards can be shared and created collaboratively

HootSuite & HubSpot Announce Partnership to Close the Loop on Social Marketing & Lead Management #ClosedLoopSocial

Strategic Partnership Will Provide Seamless Integration Features for Marketing Practitioners to Tie Social Media Activity to Lead Generation and Campaign Efforts for the First Time

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA AND CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS – HootSuite, makers of the market-leading social media management system, have entered into a strategic partnership with HubSpot, the world’s only all-in-one marketing software platform. This partnership will directly connect social media to generating, managing and nurturing leads for the first time, finally “closing the loop” on social media marketing. Joint efforts include an app integration in HootSuite’s App Directory, plus educational content and presenting sponsor of HubSpot’s Inbound 2012 Conference – follow hashtag #closedloopsocial for details. The companies will also join forces to break the existing Guinness World Record for world’s largest webinar with The Science of Inbound Marketing July 12 at 1:00pm ET.

Tweet: “Teaming of @HubSpot and @HootSuite finally allows marketers to use social to drive direct revenue #InboundSci http://ow.ly/biK7G “

Driving the partnership is the app integration, currently in beta, which automatically pulls HubSpot Lead and Keyword data into HootSuite providing an opportunity for social engagement with leads and those mentioning top performing keywords without leaving the HootSuite dashboard. This powerful integration breaks ground on lead management by closing the loop on social media and inbound marketing. Interested customers are encouraged to apply to participate in the beta program which will run for two weeks prior to the public launch at the end of June.

Tweet: “Breaking: @HootSuite and @HubSpot tie social to lead gen with first lead-focused social app #closedloopsocial http://ow.ly/bhtgU “

Be part of marketing history: The World’s Largest Webinar: HootSuite will also co-host HubSpot’s 2012 World’s Largest Webinar, going after the Guinness Record of 31,000 registrants set by HubSpot in 2011. All marketers are invited to be part of marketing history by registering for The Science of Inbound Marketing, taking place on July 12 at 1:00pm EST. and hosted by HubSpot’s Social Media Scientist, Dan Zarrella, and HootSuite’s VP of Marketing, Ben Watson. Together, the two companies will demonstrate the important role real data, facts and science play in inbound marketing. Follow hashtag #InboundSci for the latest on this groundbreaking webinar event.

“Social media spending is on the rise. We watch as companies invest significant dollars into driving marketing campaigns using social networks as the next marketing platform,” says Ryan Holmes, CEO of HootSuite Media, Inc. “Through this partnership, the professional marketer can finally follow up with social media leads, nurture relationships in real time, and close deals easier than ever before.”

“We built HubSpot software to make marketing easier, and then expanded it by launching the world’s largest marketing software marketplace just under a year ago,” said Brian Halligan, CEO of HubSpot, the all-in-one marketing software provider. “Of 60+ apps we’ve seen, HootSuite is building one of the most exciting. Plugging social media management into HubSpot’s end-to-end marketing software makes social accountable for generating leads, customers and true ROI.”

CipherCloud Delivers the First Cloud Encryption Solution for Gmail

NEW YORK CITY and SAN JOSE, Calif. – CipherCloud, a leading provider of cloud information protection gateways for public and private clouds, is unveiling CipherCloud for Gmail, the industry’s first data-at-rest encryption solution for Gmail that addresses the challenges faced by organizations with data privacy and compliance requirements. The new solution, to be announced at Cloud Expo New York, also provides additional security capabilities without affecting application performance or the end user experience, and it requires no changes to the application.

CipherCloud for Gmail will help accelerate the adoption of Gmail, particularly among global organizations with operations in regions with stringent privacy and data residency legislation, and among organizations in highly regulated industries such as financial services, healthcare, and public sector in complying with requirements such as GLBA, PCI, ITAR, HIPAA, HITECH, and FISMA.

CipherCloud for Gmail is a gateway that resides within an organization’s network to transparently encrypt all Gmail messages, before they’re sent to the cloud, while retaining important Gmail features such as advanced searching, contacts, calendar, and chat. It employs AES-256 military-grade encryption, so an organization’s content is protected using best in class security, while retaining complete control over the encryption keys.

“With CipherCloud for Gmail, our customers retain complete control over your encryption keys, so their confidential email can never be disclosed without their knowledge and approval, not even under the US Patriot or a cloud provider’s legal disclosure policy,” said CipherCloud founder and CEO, Pravin Kothari. “This is an important consideration for many of our customers.”

Key Features and Benefits of CipherCloud for Gmail

AES 256 Military-grade Encryption to Protect All Your Email Communication: CipherCloud for Gmail encrypts email subject, body, and attachments on the way to Google’s servers, so the contents are secure and can’t be accessed by anyone outside the customer’s organization.

All the Gmail Functionality Users Know and Love: CipherCloud’s encryption and decryption process is completely transparent to end users. They enjoy full protection, with near-zero latency, while retaining all native Gmail capabilities such as advanced searching, contacts, calendar, and chat.

“Bullet-proof” Security: CipherCloud provides protection against the Top Cloud Threats identified by the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), including account hijacking and data loss.

Support for Mobile: CipherCloud for Gmail works with popular mobile devices such as the iPhone and iPad.

Carolyn Crummey is a business and technology strategist and the owner of VirTasktic (www.virtasktic.com), an agency dedicated to providing high-level virtual services to small businesses and entrepreneurs. A lover of technology and small business, Carolyn has built a career on the intelligent use of technology to increase business efficiency and productivity, which ultimately leads to greater profitability. Carolyn works closely with her clients to understand their challenges and helps them integrate the best technology solutions into their businesses so they too can enjoy great successes.
You can follow Carolyn on Twitter at @CarolynCrummey or @VirTasktic.